Wednesday, May 15, 2019

My life is ordinary, steady, predictable. And I’m okay with that. Working long shifts at the hospital is all the excitement I need.

But when a simple rescue-attempt goes wrong, I find myself in the arms of an arrogant, yet sexy FBI agent.

Kai Evans is what I’d call way out of my league. Yet, we end up dating. Sort of. That’s if you count fast-bike escapes and kissing while bullets fly around us as a date.

While Kai tries to keep me safe and alive, Tyler Moore--an ex FBI agent with a smart mouth--slithers into my life. Turns out, Kai and Taylor have a history. The kind that can’t be erased with a simple handshake.

Now it’s all about settling the score between them, and Taylor has the perfect weapon to use against Kai…

Me.

When I get into the prison grounds, the security double, triple-check my ID, asking me several times if I’m sure it’s Taylor Moore I’m here to see. “Emilia Hughes, huh? It’s been a while since anybody came to visit him.”
Finally, after thoroughly searching me, they allow me into the visitation area, informing me that Taylor’s waiting for me there. I look around for a teenager fitting of being Melissa’s boyfriend. Who knows? Maybe he got mixed in with the wrong crowd, or perhaps he was wrongly accused.
Nobody fits the description. Some older men are speaking with their guests. A few others sit alone, but no one looks remotely suitable to be Melissa’s boyfriend.
A man across the room rises from his seat. His lazy smirk makes me picture a large cigar sticking out of his lopsided lips. His eyes are cunning and dark, narrowed in a knowing, appraising glance at my face. His head is shaved, and his stubble makes his jaw even squarer. Although he’s in a prisoner’s outfit, I can unmistakably see the contours of his powerful shoulders and wide chest. At what must be a few inches taller than six feet, he looks like a man who could easily break me in half. But most surprising, he’s no younger than thirty-five, and light-skinned, looking every bit unlikely to be the father of Melissa’s olive-complexion baby.
“I’m Taylor.” His voice is deep and authoritative, and it makes everybody in the room turn and look at us. “I’ve been told you wanted to speak with me. You don’t look like a lawyer.”
Tentatively, I glance at the guards, who shrug nonchalantly, as if saying, ‘You asked for it, lady,’ and watch me proceed to the table to sit opposite Taylor Moore. As I get closer, a faint smell of sandalwood reaches me.
I sit down. Even in this arrangement he seems to tower above my five-foot-three smallish frame, looking down at me with open perusal and somehow making me feel like he can see the underwear I’m wearing. Have I made a mistake coming here?
“Why couldn’t I be a lawyer?” I ask him, largely to buy myself time and regroup.
He laughs, and I see two rows of flawless white teeth with his top incisor broken, an odd defect in otherwise dental perfection.
“If you were my lawyer, I’d be in deep trouble. You wouldn’t last five minutes against the sharks in a courtroom.”
What a jerk. “I wouldn’t make such a quick judgment of the person you’ve just met. You don’t know me. I could be black belt. Or an amazing shooter with a hidden weapon underneath my clothes. I could be your last hope of getting out of here.”
He leans forward. “So are you any of those things?” he whispers.
“No. But that doesn’t mean you should dismiss me so quickly.”
He lets out a chuckle. “Three. I give you three minutes in the courtroom.”
I grit my teeth. I must get this over with, as quickly as possible, before I prove it to him that I could last more than five kicking him. Too bad we’re in a prison. Wait. Oh, crap. What am I talking about? I’d never resort to violence, even if I’m dealing with a man like this one. “I have a message for you,” I inform him cordially, raising my voice to give myself confidence and meeting his cunning eyes. “From Melissa.”
“Oh?” He grins from ear to ear, his eyes lightening up in delighted mischief. “It’s gotta be good.”
I can’t believe Melissa actually asked for him. “How long have you been in prison?”
His lips spread in a wolfish grin. “You wanna exchange pleasantries? How’s your day been? Thinking about sneaking weapons under your clothes? If you want a tip, up inside your thigh is the best place, assuming you’re wearing loose clothes. But you still not gonna pass the scans and the pat-downs.”
“I don’t need any tips. And who said I want to be pleasant to you?”
He smacks his lips. “You’re breaking my heart.”
“I guess you’ll have to deal with it.” His eyes light up, probably with another one of his ‘suggestions,’ and I remember my mission here. “Melissa needs you.”
“Huh?” His gaze locks on mine. He no longer seems amused by me. The thought that he could snap me like a dry branch comes back with renewed conviction, and I visually measure the distance to the security in case I need to run for the exit.
“Is everything all right, Doctor Hughes?” the guard asks.
Taylor leans forward across the table and whispers roughly, “What did you say your name was?”
Run. I should get out of here. Put this behind me and never look back. Yet, whatever’s gotten into me, I can’t move an inch. I need to know who Taylor Moore is and why Melissa asked me to see him.
His eyes narrow into tiny slits. “Doctor Hughes, is it? It didn’t click immediately, but now I remember. I saw you on TV this morning. Why are you here?”
“I’m here to deliver a message, that’s all.” I can’t shake off the feeling that he believes I’m here for reasons totally different from telling him about the baby.
I get up and dash toward the exit. This isn’t what I signed up for. I agreed to deliver a message to Melissa’s boyfriend, whom I believed to be a young messed up teenager, not a convict.
“You know why I’m here?” he asks loudly from across the room.

Katerina Baker is a lucky gal who still attempts to have it all: full-time project management job that she enjoys, crazy family of four (with the ongoing threats of getting a pet to upset the family equilibrium) and writing.
Although on some days she is much more successful at managing her life than on the others, she still claims that she doesn’t want it any other way.
Katerina’s latest novel Under the Scrubs will be published in the spring of 2019 by Limitless Publishing. Her YA novel Blue is represented by Sharon Belcastro from Belcastro Agency.